Steps to building mental health and wellbeing at work

Effectively addressing mental health issues in the workplace requires a systematic approach. This part of the website outlines such an approach in six steps:

Develop a mental health and wellbeing policy

Communicate it to all employees

Needs analysis

Identify and prioritise actions that need to be taken

Implement actions

Evaluate and review

Designing and implementing a health and wellbeing policy should be done in a collaborative way – employees and employers need to cooperate (with external help if necessary) in order to produce the best programme possible. Given that an effective programme will incorporate both statutory obligations (under health and safety legislation) as well as voluntary elements, the agreement of all workplace players is needed for effective implementation.

One useful resource to help produce an integrated programme are the guidelines produced by DG Employment which address the issue of managing all aspects of mental wellbeing in the workplace: